Rush: ”My body has been to hell and back”

Hockey player turned photographer Rush Zimmerman loves her body through everything – and despite whatever she puts it through, it still loves her back.

16 June 2016.

Photo: Will Davidson/M.A.P.

Styling: Ilona Hamer/Bridge Artists

Two days before leaving for the Olympics, Rush Zimmerman injured her
knee and was forced to give up a life-long dream. ”The injury forced me to think about a
life after hockey. For the first time in my life I was like ‘holy
shit, I am not going to make a living out of this!’”.

Rush turned to her other passion in life: photography. After
starting her career at Getty, then moving on to fashion photography,
she is now working on her own project, telling empowering stories
about female athletes.”I’ve
merged the two things I love the most; hockey and photography,” she says.

I want my bikinis to fit well and make me feel I could do
anything in them.

Rush Zimmerman

WHEN DO YOU FEEL THE MOST BEAUTIFUL? ”When I am grounded. When
I know exactly who I am and what I want. When I am living out my
purpose and when I understand what my purpose it, that’s when I feel
the most beautiful.”

WERE YOU DISAPPOINTED WITH YOUR BODY WHEN YOU WERE FORCED TO GIVE UP
YOUR HOCKEY CAREER? ”No! It keeps going and going and going.
I’ve taken it to hell and back – imagine being my body for 33 years.
It has been through everything with me, even though I haven’t treated
it the way I should have. It’s mine, you know, and it’s still with me.”

HAVE YOU ALWAYS BEEN BODY POSITIVE?”I would say yes, but in retrospect, I was
crazy. When you’re an athlete, you have this mentality when you work
out eight hours a day. I was trying to keep that up after I stopped
playing, and if I missed a day of working out I would feel gross,
disgusting. It becomes an obsession. I had to use all that mental
toughness I had learnt as a player to shut it off.”

WHAT KIND OF SWIMWEAR DO YOU LIKE?”I want my bikinis to fit well and make me
feel I could do anything in them. I’ve been really simple with
swimwear, but just recently I’ve started looking at cuts. I used to
be a creature of habit, buying the same ones in different colours.
But it’s just like with clothes, [swimwear] is an expression of
yourself. Now I totally get why people have all these crazy bikinis.”

RUSH ZIMMERMAN & NADIA ALBOUHOSN

TELL US YOUR FAVOURITE SUMMER MEMORY. ”My favourite summer
memories are from Northern Michigan, back with my family. We used to
have this old station wagon, and my sister and I would take it out and
tie a tow rope on the back of the car and I would put on my
rollerblades and go flying down the street. It was not safe! (laughs.)
We’d go so fast my rollerblades would spark.”

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